Day 11: Sevierville and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee

We got up today and headed about 15 miles south with our eventual destination being Rachel’s Treehouse, our cabin in the woods, for the next three nights – see a description and renting information by clicking HERE. Since we couldn’t check in until 4 p.m., we decided to hit every antique store between Kodak and Pigeon Forge for possible goodness, and there were quite a few, but we came up empty.

We decided to head toward the cabin around 1 p.m. just to see if, by chance, maybe it was ready for us. It was! Woo hoo! So we mozied down yonder. It wasn’t the easiest place in the world to find…seriously, Columbus, Magellan and Vespucci, combined, would have struggled to locate this place using a compass and the North Star. After searching the world over, we stumbled upon it to find a country giant standing in the doorway. Surely, the place with the starting center for the 1957 Boston Celtics, clad in overalls and a Stetson fedora, could not be our place of lodging. Of course it was. And that lanky mountain man was not only the handyman; he also built the place from scratch with his own hands.

His name is Ray Ball and he is a self-proclaimed mountain man with a sixth-grade education. Everything else since was learned on the job or self-taught. And all with only two fingers on his left hand…he blew them off when he was eight playing with dynamite. Of course he did. He collected, cut and milled the wood, chiseled and placed the stone, and even built the place around a tree. He and his “woman,” as he called her, own six cabins that he has built himself and she decorates. I know all of this because we had the privilege of talking to Ray for about an hour.

He was one of the most sincere and interesting people ever – just a down to earth mountain main who has lived his entire life in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. He said he hasn’t always been a good man, but one day, around the birth of his daughter some 40 years ago, he “got right with the Lord” and asked him to help him learn how to build things to become a better man. Consider it done, Ray. There’s even a chapter written about Ray in The Ultimate Fly-Fishing Guide to the Smoky Mountains. See it by consulting The Google or just click HERE.

Ray recommended that we go into Great Smoky Mountain National Park to Cades Cove for the best possible wildlife viewing as soon as the park opens and even gave us great “back roads” directions. The dude rocks it. We could have spent the whole day with him, but he had to go eat dinner, which means lunch to the rest of us. I hope we get to see him again on this trip and that, friends, is no lie.

I’ve decided that I’m not coming back and I’m going to be a mountain man, so this will be my last post. I just need Jeepers to FedEx the Dings down to me and all will be well. Julia is totally on board. She’s already collected enough mountain varmints to make a nice stew, and we will live off the fat of the land, so we will not starve.

Tomorrow, we head into the Great Smoky Mountains never to be heard from again. Nice knowing y’all.

Don’t be confused…the only photos we took today are included in this post. I doubt anyone would really want to see the interiors of antique stores other than this photo of this guy who was waiting for us on the counter when we entered.